The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  Caroline thought, ‘The demands of the Christian religion are exorbitant, they are outrageous. Christians who don’t realize that from the start are not faithful. They are dishonest; their teachers are talking in their sleep. “Love one another … brethren, beloved … your brother, neighbours, love, love, love” — do they know what they are saying?’

  She had stopped eating, was conscious of two things, a splitting headache and Mrs Hogg. These bemused patterers on the theme of love, had they faced Mrs Hogg in person? Returning to her carriage Caroline passed a married couple who had been staying at St Philumena’s, on their way to the dining-car. They had been among the fireside company. She remembered that they were to have left today.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Miss Rose! I didn’t think you were leaving so soon.’ People were pressing to pass, which gave Caroline a chance to escape. ‘I was called away,’ she said, moving off.

  The couple had been received into the Church two months ago, so they had told the company round the fire.

  Their new-found faith was expressed in a rowdy contempt for the Church of England, in which the woman’s father was a clergyman. ‘Father was furious when we went over to Rome. Of course he’s Anglo-Catholic; they have holy water and the saints; everything bar the Faith; too killing.’ She was a large-boned and muscled woman in her mid-thirties. She had set in her final development, at the stage of athletic senior prefect. She had some hair on her face. Her lower lip had a minor pugilistic twist. Of the two, she made the more noise, but her husband, with his smooth thin face, high pink colouring, who looked as if he never needed to shave, was a good support for his wife as they sat round the fire at St Philumena’s. He said, ‘The wonderful thing about being a Catholic is that it makes life so easy. Everything easy for salvation and you can have a happy life. All the little things that the Protestants hate, like the statues and the medals, they all help us to have a happy life.’ He finished there, as if he had filled up the required page of his school exercise book, and need state no more; he lay back in his chair, wiped his glasses, crossed his legs.

  At this point the West of Ireland took over, warning them, ‘Converts have a lot to learn. You can always tell a convert from a cradle Catholic. There’s something different.’

  The dipsomaniac lawyer, with his shiny blue suit, said, ‘I like converts’, and smiled weakly at Caroline. His smile faded away before Mrs Hogg’s different smile.

  At Crewe, Caroline got the compartment to herself again. She began to reflect that Mrs Hogg could easily become an obsession, the demon of that carnal hypocrisy which struck her mind whenever she came across a gathering of Catholics or Jews engaged in their morbid communal pleasures. She began to think of her life in London, her work, Laurence to whom she must send a wire; he would be amused by her account of St Philumena’s. She began to giggle, felt drowsy, and, settling into her corner, fell asleep.

  THREE

  When Laurence returned to the cottage after posting his letter to Caroline his grandmother handed him a telegram.

  He read it. ‘It’s from Caroline. She’s back in London.’

  ‘Yes, funny, I had a feeling it was from Caroline.’ Louisa very often revealed a mild form of the gipsy’s psychic faculties. ‘Fancy, what a pity you’ve posted that letter to Liverpool.’

  As Laurence set off to the post office again to telephone Caroline, he said, ‘Shall I ask her to come down here?’

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ Louisa said with that inclination of her head which was a modified form of the regal gesture. When he was small she used to tell Laurence ‘Don’t just answer “Yes”; say “Yes, certainly”, that’s how Queen Mary always answers.’

  ‘How do you know that, Grandmother?’

  ‘A person told me.’

  ‘Are you sure the person was telling the truth?’

  ‘Oh yes, certainly.’

  ‘Tell Caroline,’ Louisa called after him, ‘that I have some blackberries in my tins,’ meaning by this to tell Laurence of her genuine desire for Caroline’s visit.

  ‘All right, I will.’

  ‘And ask the post office to give you back the letter. There’s no reason to send it all the way to Liverpool.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t fish it out without a fuss,’ Laurence told her. ‘They never give you back a letter, once it’s posted. Not without a fuss.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Laurence said. ‘I’ll be seeing Caroline. I wonder why she left so soon?’

  ‘Yes, I wonder why.’

  Caroline’s number was engaged when he rang. The sky had cleared and the autumn sun, low in the sky, touched the countryside. He decided to go to Ladle Sands, a half-hour’s walk, from where he could try Caroline’s number again, and by which time the pubs would be open. He was impatient to talk to Caroline. His desire to get her interested and involved in the mystery surrounding his grandmother was almost a fulfilment of a more compelling desire to assert the continuing pattern of their intimacy.

  Laurence had no success with Caroline’s phone that night. He pursued the exchange with mounting insistence on the urgency of getting through; they continued to reply in benumbed and fatalistic tones that the phone was out of order, it had been reported.

  A queer buzzing sound brought Caroline to the telephone just before midnight. ‘Your receiver has been off. We’ve been trying to get a call through from Sussex.’ They were extremely irate.

  ‘It hasn’t been off,’ said Caroline.

  ‘It must have been misplaced. Please replace your receiver.

  ‘And the call? Are you putting it through?’

  ‘No. The caller has gone now.

  Caroline thought, ‘Well, he will ring in the morning.’ She lay on her divan staring out at the night sky beyond her balcony, too tired to draw the curtains. She was warmed by the knowledge that Laurence was near to hand, wanting to speak to her. She could rely on him to take her side, should there be any difficulty with Helena over her rapid departure from St Philumena’s. On the whole she did not think there would be any difficulty with Helena.

  Just then she heard the sound of a typewriter. It seemed to come through the wall on her left. It stopped, and was immediately followed by a voice remarking her own thoughts. It said: On the whole she did not think there would be any difficulty with Helena.

  There seemed, then, to have been more than one voice: it was a recitative, a chanting in unison. It was something like a concurrent series of echoes. Caroline jumped up and over to the door. There was no one on the landing or on the staircase outside. She returned to her sitting-room and shut the door. Everything was quiet. The wall, from which direction the sounds had come, divided her sitting-room from the first-floor landing of a house converted into flats. Caroline’s flat occupied the whole of this floor. She had felt sure the sounds had come from the direction of the landing. Now she searched the tiny flat. The opposite wall separated the bed-sitting-room from the bathroom and kitchen. Everything was quiet there. She went out on to the balcony from where she could see the whole length of Queen’s Gate. Two servicemen clattered up the street and turned into Cromwell Road. The neighbouring balconies were dark and empty. Caroline returned to the room, closed the windows, and drew the curtains.

  She had taken the flat four weeks ago. The house held six flats, most of which were occupied by married couples or young men who went out to their offices every day. Caroline knew the other tenants only by sight, greeting them in passing on the staircase. There were occasional noises at night, when someone had a party, but usually the house was quiet. Caroline tried to recall the tenants in the flat above hers. She was not certain; they all passed her landing on their way upstairs and she herself had never gone beyond the first floor.

  A typewriter and a chorus of voices: What on earth are they up to at this time of night? Caroline wondered. But what worried her were the words they had used, coinciding so exactly with her own thoughts.

  Then it began again. Tap-tappity-tap; the typewri
ter. And again, the voices: Caroline ran out on to the landing, for it seemed quite certain the sound came from that direction. No one was there. The chanting reached her as she returned to her room, with these words exactly:

  What on earth are they up to at this time of night? Caroline wondered. But what worried her were the words they had used, coinciding so exactly with her own thoughts.

  And then the typewriter again: tap-tap-tap. She was rooted. ‘My God!’ she cried aloud. ‘Am I going mad?’

  As soon as she had said it, and with the sound of her own voice, her mind was filled with an imperative need to retain her sanity. It was the phrase ‘Caroline wondered’ which arrested her. Immediately then, shaken as she was, Caroline began to consider the possibilities, whether the sounds she had heard were real or illusory. While the thought terrified her that she was being haunted by people — spirits or things — beings who had read her thoughts, perhaps who could read her very heart, she could not hope for the horrible alternative. She feared it more; she feared that those sounds, so real that they seemed to have come from the other side of the wall, were hallucinations sent forth from her own mind. Caroline sat for the next half-hour dazed and frightened, wondering what to do. She dreaded a repetition of the experience, yet prayed for some sign that her mind was not unhinged. The question began to appear as one on which she could herself decide; it was like being faced with a choice between sanity and madness.

  She had already concluded that the noise could not have come from anyone in the house. The fact that her feelings and reflections were being recorded seemed to point to some invisible source, the issue being, was it objectively real or was it imaginary? If the sounds came from some real, invisible typewriter and voices, Caroline felt she was in danger, might go mad, but the experience was not itself a sign of madness. She was now utterly convinced that what she had heard was not the product of her own imagination. ‘I am not mad. I’m not mad. See; I can reflect on the situation. I am being haunted. I am not haunting myself.’ Meantime, she was trembling, frightened out of her wits, although her fear was not altogether blind.

  Tap-click-tap. The voices again: Meantime, she was trembling, frightened out of her wits, although her fear was not altogether blind.

  ‘Christ!’ she said. ‘Who is it there?’ Although she had decided quite reasonably that no one in the house could be responsible for those sounds, none the less when she actually heard the voices again, so clear, just behind the wall, she sprang up and began to search every corner of the flat, even under the divan, which was too low to conceal a human body; even in the little cupboard where the gas meter was fixed. The activity took the edge off her panic, and although she knew she would not find her tormentors in this way, she put all her energy into the search, moving furniture, opening and shutting doors. She suspected everything, however improbable; even that the sound might be contained in some quite small object — a box with a machine inside, operated from a distance. She acted upon these suspicions, examining everything closely in case she should find something strange.

  There was suddenly a knocking from the ceiling. Caroline propelled herself out of the flat and switched on the landing lights.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she called up the stairs. ‘Who is it?’ Her voice was strained high with fear.

  There was a movement above her, round the bend of the stair. A shuffle, and the opening of a door on the second landing. A woman’s voice whispered fiercely, ‘Keep quiet!’

  Looking straight above her, Caroline saw the top half of a woman leaning over the banister, long wisps of grey hair falling over her face and her loose white garment showing between the banisters. Caroline screamed, was too late to stop herself when she recognized the woman as the occupant of the flat above.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ the angry tenant breathed at her. ‘What do you mean by waking the house at this time of night? It’s twenty-two minutes past one, and you’ve been banging about moving furniture and slamming doors for the last hour. I haven’t slept a wink. I’ve got to go out to business in the morning.’

  Another door opened on the second floor, and a man’s voice said, ‘Anything the matter? I heard a girl scream.’ The woman scuttled back into her room, being undressed, and finished her complaint with her head only showing outside her door.

  ‘It was that young woman downstairs. She’s been making a disturbance for the past hour. Did you hear her?’

  ‘I certainly heard a scream,’ the man’s voice said.

  Caroline ran up a few steps so as to see the speakers from the bend in the staircase. ‘I got a terrible fright when I saw you,’ she explained to the woman. ‘Was that you knocking?’

  ‘Indeed it was,’ said the woman. ‘I’ll complain about this in the morning.’

  ‘Were you using a typewriter?’ Caroline began to inquire. She was helpless and shaky. ‘I heard a typewriter, and voices.

  ‘You’re mad!’ said the woman, as she withdrew and shut the door. The young man had also retreated.

  Caroline returned to her rooms, and, rapidly and stealthily, began to pack a small suitcase. She wondered where she would spend the rest of the night. A lonely hotel room was unthinkable, it would have to be a friend’s house. She moved about, jerkily snatching at the necessary articles as if she expected some invisible hand, concealed in each object, to close over hers before she had got possession of it. She was anxious to make as little sound as possible, but in her nervousness bumped into the furniture and knocked over a glass dish. To protect herself from the noises of her movements, she contracted a muscle somewhere behind her nose and throat, which produced the effect in her ears as of a rustling breeze — it dulled the sound of her footsteps, making the whole operation sound quieter than it was.

  Caroline pressed down the lid of her small case. She had decided where to go for the night. The Baron; he was awake, or at least available, at all hours. She opened the case again, remembering that she had packed her money; she would need it for the taxi to the Baron’s flat in Hampstead. She was absorbed by the pressing need to get out of her flat at the earliest possible moment, and as she searched among her clothes she did not even notice, with her customary habit of self-observation, that she had thrown her night-things together anyhow. The difference between this frenzied packing operation and the deliberate care she had taken, in spite of her rage, to fold and fit her possessions into place at St Philumena’s less than a day ago failed to register.

  Tap-tick-tap. Tap. She did not even notice. Click-tappity with her customary habit of self-observation, that she had thrown her night-things together anyhow. The difference between this frenzied packing operation and the deliberate care she had taken, in spite of her rage, to fold and fit her possessions into place at St Philumena’s less than a day ago failed to register. Tap.

  Coat — hat — handbag — suitcase; Caroline grabbed them and hustled out of the door, slamming it to. She rattled downstairs and out of the front door, which she slammed behind her. At the top of Queen’s Gate, turning in from Old Brompton Road, she got a taxi and secured herself inside it with a slam of the door.

  ‘It is quite a common thing,’ Willi Stock said. ‘Your brain is overworked.’ This was the Baron speaking. He stood by the electric fire with its flicking imitation coals, sipping Curaçao.

  Caroline sipped hers, curled up on the sofa, and crying. Absorbing the warmth of the fire and of the liquor, she felt a warmth of gratitude towards the Baron. For the last hour he had been explaining her mental condition. She was consoled, not by the explanations, but by the fact of his recognizable face, by the familiar limitations of his mind, and by the reality of his warm flat and his bottle of Curaçao.

  For the first time in her life, she felt that Willi Stock was an old friend. Regarding him in this category, she was able to secure her conscience in his company. For the Baron belonged to one of the half-worlds of Caroline’s past, of which she had gradually taken leave; it was a society which she had half-forgotten, and of which she had come wholly to
disapprove. It was over a year since she had last seen the Baron. But Laurence had kept up with him, had mentioned him from time to time, which confirmed Caroline in her feeling, that she was in the company of an old friend. She greatly needed the protection of an old friend till daylight.

  He said, ‘Eleanor is away on tour just now.’

  Caroline said, ‘I know, Laurence had a postcard.’

  Eleanor Hogarth was the Baron’s mistress. ‘Did he?’ said the Baron. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Oh, last week sometime. He merely mentioned it.’

  They called him the Baron because he called himself Baron Stock. Caroline was not aware from what aristocracy he derived his title: nor had anyone inquired; she was sure it was not self-imposed as some suggested. He came originally from the Belgian Congo, had travelled in the Near East, loitered in Europe, and finally settled in England, a naturalized British subject. That was fifteen years ago, and he was now nearing fifty. Caroline had always felt that the Baron had native African blood, without being able to locate its traces in any one feature. She had been in Africa, and had a sense of these things. It was a matter of casual curiosity to her; but she had noticed, some years ago, when Africa’s racial problems were being discussed in company with the Baron, he had denounced the blacks with ferocious bitterness, out of all proportion to the occasion. This confirmed Caroline’s judgement; there was, too, an expression of pathos which at times appeared on the Baron’s face, which she had seen in others of concealed mixed colour; and there was something about the whites of his eyes; what it was she did not know. And altogether, having observed these things, she did not much care.